As portable electronic devices become more compact, and the number of functions performed by a given device increase, it has become a significant challenge to design a user interface that allows users to easily interact with a multifunction device. This challenge is particular significant for handheld portable devices, which have much smaller screens than desktop or laptop computers. This situation is unfortunate because the user interface is the gateway through which users receive not only content but also responses to user actions or behaviors, including user attempts to access a device's features, tools, and functions. Some portable communication devices (e.g., mobile telephones, sometimes called mobile phones, cell phones, cellular telephones, and the like) have resorted to adding more pushbuttons, increasing the density of push buttons, overloading the functions of pushbuttons, or using complex menu systems to allow a user to access, store and manipulate data. These conventional user interfaces often result in complicated key sequences and menu hierarchies that must be memorized by the user.
Many conventional user interfaces, such as those that include physical pushbuttons, are also inflexible. This is unfortunate because it may prevent a user interface from being configured and/or adapted by either an application running on the portable device or by users. When coupled with the time consuming requirement to memorize multiple key sequences and menu hierarchies, and the difficulty in activating a desired pushbutton, such inflexibility is frustrating to most users.
Some portable electronic devices include one or more accelerometers, which are used to determine the display orientation of the information on the screen. In these devices, information is presented on the display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers. In other words, to change the orientation of the information displayed on the screen, a user may change the orientation of the device. This type of display change does not change the information being displayed or the functions that can be performed, i.e., this type of display change does not change the mode of the application. Rather, this type of display change merely changes the orientation of the information being displayed.
If a user is using a certain application on a portable electronic device and wants to transition to another mode within that application, the user typically must go through a series of steps and navigate through one or more display screens before reaching the desired mode. Such navigation may be cumbersome for the user because it is time consuming and the user may forget the proper navigation steps.
Accordingly, there is a need for portable multifunction devices with more transparent and intuitive user interfaces for transitioning from one mode to another within a particular application. Such interfaces increase the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction with portable multifunction devices.